


Statement #0191419, Mx. Soren Edley

by Bayerick



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Disturbing Themes, Unbeta'd, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 20:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bayerick/pseuds/Bayerick
Summary: Statement of Mx. Soren Edley, researcher and Communications Specialist at the Magnus Institute, regarding a string of supernatural occurrences throughout their lifetime. Case number unassigned as of yet, and pending investigation as necessary. (Fan Statement, featuring an original character who I may write some more works for.)





	Statement #0191419, Mx. Soren Edley

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Mx. Soren Edley, regarding a...well, how would you describe this... incident?

SOREN

The best I can come up with would be... a statement regarding a string of supernatural occurrences through my lifetime? Something like that. It's not really just one thing. Like, a conglomeration of things I've told you and the others off hand, but this time we're getting it down on tape.

ARCHIVIST

Right. Do you need anything before we begin?

SOREN

No, I don't think so. I'd rather get straight to it, since I'm here and everything. ( _ Pause _ .) Are you going to do the thing with your voice?

ARCHIVIST

The thing...oh, the Compulsion? Er, not if you're comfortable sharing the statement on your own, I suppose.

SOREN

You told me before it makes people more eloquent when you do it, though. I wouldn't mind that, if it stops me rambling about, keeps me on track.

ARCHIVIST

Do you want me to...ask you properly, then?

SOREN

Sure, that's fine. I've always wondered what it felt like.

ARCHIVIST

I've heard it described as...tingly, once.

SOREN

Huh. Weird. Is it, like, a bad tingly? Good tingly? Licking a battery or actually getting electrocuted?

ARCHIVIST

I never asked. ( _ A pause _ .) Considering who it came from, I would rather not think about it.

SOREN

Oh. Sorry, then. Didn't mean to bring something uncomfortable up.

ARCHIVIST

No, it's alright. Let's begin?

SOREN

Y--yeah.

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Mx. Soren Edley, researcher and Communications Specialist at the Magnus Institute, regarding a string of supernatural occurrences throughout their lifetime. Case number unassigned as of yet, and pending investigation as necessary. Taken direct from subject, September 14, 2019, by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Alright. ( _ Pause. Soft Compulsion noises heard in the background. _ ) Would you tell me what happened?

.

SOREN

_ (Deep breath.) _

I wouldn't say everything started as soon as I was born, because that's cliche, right? But it kind of did, though. I was born before I was supposed to, two and a half months before, actually. People say all sorts of things about near-death experiences and how they change you, but I think I was changed from the start, seeing as all of those near-deaths happened when I wasn't even aware of them. It sounds so ridiculous when you say stuff like that, though. "Oh, I was touched by the forces unseen when I was a baby in my mother's arms,"

Not even then, though. I was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the NICU. Not even in my mother's arms for a good long while. I was a sickly baby. Passed from hospital to hospital for a myriad of treatments. Necrotizing enterocolitis, that's when bacteria gets into your intestines and makes them infected, and if you're unlucky they start rotting. MRSA, once. Patent ductus arteriosus, where your heart valve isn't closed right. My lungs weren't developed right, and they had to stick a feeding tube in me to get me to eat.

I don't remember any of this, of course. I got out of it all unscathed, but I can't tell you the amount of times they thought I was done for. People expect things like that to happen to a baby that small and weak.

This is all to say that I was either extremely, extremely lucky or something unnatural was looking out for me. The more religious members of my family said it was God or Angels or something. I don't think it was that, so I erred on the side of luck for a while at least.

The things I can remember started when I was a child. This would have been 2003, third grade. I think they call that Year 4 here? I went to primary school for a year at the old temple in my hometown, this massive multipurpose complex mixing old and new, religious and secular. They turned it into a Jewish Cultural Center years ago, but when I was there as a child, the temple had these grand stained-glass windows and an arching angular ceiling where when the congregation would sing prayers, the notes would just have this ethereal echo to them. Like God was sending our songs back to us. Some of my fondest memories took place there; chasing the other children outside the synagogue doors during Sunday services, or eating the raisin challah and grape juice they set out for us afterwards.

Outside the temple there was this massive botanical garden, and when I went to school the teachers would let us have recess there. There was this patch of forest separating the temple's gardens from unaffiliated buildings down the slope, and I either played there or in the garden itself. I recall this wide reaching pond and creek where these huge cattails bloomed, the kind where if you touch them they just...fall away. I played with little freshwater snails, picked wildflowers. My favorites were the honeysuckle bushes in the forest. _ (A chuckle.) _ I used to pretend I was an ancient human, surviving on my own years before technology. I'd pick the little buds and savor them like candy, used to drink the juice I packed in my lunchbox out of ceramic dishes I made in art class. ( _ Laughs _ ) I never said I was a normal child. I mean, I played alright with others, but I really liked being on my own. I'd tell myself these intricate stories about just anything, and the time would fly by.

Sometimes, though, the forests used to stretch out much farther than I remember, and I'd wander out, my tiny feet tripping over the roots of the massive oaks that grew. I'd walk so far I couldn't hear the teacher's whistle any more, or the other kids screaming and running about. I'd just be absolutely alone, with only the sound of birdsong and water from the creek nearby. I'd go so far that you'd think I'd reach the buildings down the slope, but the slope would just keep going and going. The sky disappears when you're far enough in the forest, you know? When the leaves come together in just the right way, they knit themselves together in this dense canopy. I'd stumble but keep walking down the slope, holding onto saplings or nearby rocks, and keep telling myself these fantastical stories. I don't remember any of the details, but I'd enchant myself as I walked, just going deeper and deeper into the forest. Farther than it should have gone, in patterns so complex that I would have lost myself in these woods.

And then the whistle would sound, and somehow I was back where I started. Only the allotted thirty minutes would have passed, and I'd go back to class with no one being the wiser.

Or I'd walk in the gardens, and stare into the algae-ridden pond, and stir it with a stick until the murky water beneath was visible. In that pond I wouldn't see the reflection of my own face, but I'd have this... feeling that something ancient. something I couldn't understand was looking back at me. Like it would reach up a hand made out of that brackish filth and cling to me, and drag me under if I got too close, or if I tripped over one of the stones that made up the path around the pond. That was what scared me the most, I think. The feeling that something I couldn't see or properly understand was waiting just around the bend, whether that bend was the boundary between air and black water, or the boundary between the world I could actively see and the world I couldn't. I always felt like there was this film that clung to the air, and if just walked in the right direction I would pass from this world, the tangible one where I was seven year old Soren, into some... other place.

The dreams started happening when I was ten. Always vivid, but usually forgotten on my waking. I remember the aftereffects, though, because days later, I'd be doing something, and then bam, I'd see the expanse of what occured in my dream happening in real life. Things I'd remember happening in my dream would never be quite the same, but be very, very close. Not prophecy, but something not dissimilar to it, I guess. It's like I could tell the future but only as it was happening. Like I could see the twist the future would make in that few seconds before it happened, and be so certain of it, even if it had never happened before.

Those dreams heralded other dreams, just as vivid, often just as narrative, but far more disturbing.

Do you know how when you close your eyes and press on your eyeballs, you see colors, but you can't really explain them? I dreamt of those colors. Colors I couldn't name or tell apart but they incited in me this horrible, gut-wrenching fear, as they merged and dissolved and shone like light through stained glass.

I dreamt of freezing cold, angry seas, churning with white foam, and falling into them, inhaling water until my lungs could stand no more. Driving off a bridge in my family's Toyota Corolla into a cold river, where the fall was just as horrible as the feeling of water rushing in through the shattered plexiglass windows.

In other dreams, my teeth would fall out. That's not uncommon, I know, but the sheer number of teeth that would extricate themselves from my mouth were ...unnatural. Or I'd place a finger to my front incisors, feel them thin as a flower petal, and push inwards where they'd just fall on my tongue and crumble like fine sugar. Or my teeth would rot away in front of my eyes, turn black with corruption. Or worse, my teeth would keep growing. Where one tooth would start, two more would appear in its place, or three, sprouting off one another like horrible fractals of enamel, until I'd choke on them or simply be unable to breathe.

Other times, I'd feel an itch in my eye, sometimes, and place my fingers into where my tear ducts would have been, push them deep into the flesh, grabbing hold of something, and pull. I'd keep pulling until it comes out, a woven fisherman's net made out of string, five feet, six feet of it, ten feet. It would only stop coming when I'd wake.

The dreams never stopped. I still have them, though more often than not they are tempered by the traumas I have endured in my waking hours. Those....I think those are scarier than the others. Hell is other people, they say. Maybe they're right. (Softer.) Maybe, for me, hell is one person I keep coming back to.

Age twelve, middle school. My school had been around since the 1800s, under multiple names and owners. It's a collection of lofts now, repurposed into apartments, and I hold no small amount of disdain for that fact. That building had so much history. As far as I can recall, the land it was built on was owned by abolitionists who used it as part of the Underground Railroad. Before that, it was owned by a couple who used it as a place for disadvantaged children to learn in safety. I don't recall much about the history anymore, but if you want details on the building, I can point you in the right direction for research.

But there were so many doors there, most leading to corridors that I never could enter correctly. It was well known that if you didn't take the right stairwell, you'd end up on the opposite side of the building, but no matter what side I took, I ended up in the wrong place. I'd wander along the empty halls, shoes clicking on the mosaic flooring. Some doors would open when I passed them. I would not enter them. A few windows, too, would fly open on their ancient hinges when no wind passed through them, when the August air was as stagnant as it could get in a building without functional cooling units. Other doors, though, would sing to me. Not in words, but in a way I can only describe as song. My heart would palpitate in my chest, skip beats. I'd feel above myself, ears ringing. The closer I got, my fingers would tingle as if I had placed them in ice water. My brain would buzz like a live wire.

Sometimes, there would be murmurs behind those entryways, even if I saw no shadow of human life in the opening between floor and threshold. Those doors called me more than the other ones. Some of them remained locked; I remember trying to open a few to no avail. Others, I felt the wood give...warm like human flesh under my fingers, and I'd run away before they could swing open.

There was a rumor of a friendly and matronly ghost of a woman who lived in that building when it was used to school poor children. Abigail, they said her name was, and that she sat in a wooden rocking chair in the Creative Writing classroom.

I never felt a matronly presence in all my years there. Always, when I ran into the doors, or the wrong stairways, or the empty corridors, it felt like looking into the black pond at the temple. Looking into something that saw me, even though I wasn't able to see it, exactly. Inscrutable, enigmatic. Whatever it was, it was attached to me. Calling me.

I don't know why, but nothing happened in the entirety of high school. Perhaps the supernatural forces that are so ever present decided to give me a break, thought burgeoning hormones and bullies would be enough to give me a scare. I mean, they weren't wrong. High school was hell, for reasons ...not related to anything supernatural.

College was much the same way. Things...happened during that time. Things I can attribute to the evils of human nature, of particularly cruel people, and again, not to those impossible forces that follow me. Maybe I'll tell you about it, not on tape. Over tea, or something, but if I'm being honest, I'll probably need something stronger.

I went to Japan on multiple occasions before I matriculated, mostly doing work and study with members of the indigenous Ainu communities in northern Japan. Hokkaido. I spent time in Tokyo, too, and then Osaka, but that was after I graduated. Things followed me there, but that's to be expected. It was rare that I noticed them, mostly because I was exhausted from working on so many things at once in two languages. Looking into the Lake Poroto in Shiraoi, for instance, reminded me of those dark pools of water, those murmuring doors. When I waded into the water to collect tree fibers my workmates and I laid out to soak for making attush1, I felt the lake envelop me like in my childhood dreams. Instead of being frigid, I remember the waves lapping against me were warm, and that I was being drawn into them as a magnet would collect iron filings. It took all of my strength to not just...keep going, until my hanten2 was soaked and I was up to my eyes. But I stopped, somehow. I collected the tree fibers, and left. I never waded there again.

I went to a ramen shop in Asakusa with a good friend of mine during my study abroad program in college . It was frequented by tourists, and it looked cheap enough. The food was good, at first, and for a while, we chatted idly. But my friend kept staring over my shoulder with a look of intent worry.

"He's not supposed to be there." my friend said, and the flowing of my blood slowed as doom settled into my chest. When I looked behind me, there wasn't anyone there. My heart sat heavy in my ribcage, and every time it beat, it hurt so terribly. Like an anvil had settled over my shoulders, pressing down on me. 

I couldn't eat anything any more. Nausea curled in my stomach. Soon, where once had been that weight of fear came anxiety. Panic. I asked my companion if he felt strange at all, and he nodded in assent.

"I have to get out of here," I told my friend, who nodded. We paid, hurriedly, dropping 2000 yen at the counter and barely bothering to take the change. When we reached a Starbucks a few blocks away, our legs aching from the speed at which we walked, we didn't feel the presence again. I rested my head on the cool enameled wood of a table, after I ordered tea, and then I cried like a baby.

There was a space of a few years where I worked in Japan as a researcher and translator. Nothing happened, at least nothing different than the usual. Nightmares. Feeling watched. The presence, and all. But then I started feeling restless, more so than I have ever felt. I flew to London at the behest of a research fellow who saw my work on the interplay of linguistics and ritual. She told me about this place, and you know the rest. Visa paperwork, job application, flat rental.

And now I'm here, working with you all. I'd be lying if I said things haven't steadily increased. I feel the inscrutable presence drawing me ever closer to that boundary between worlds. The nightmares are back with a vengeance. I sleep, but fitfully, and take more melatonin than I should. I keep feeling like something's watching me, something heavy and tangible as a hand on my shoulder, guiding me. I don't know if it brought me here, if all the things I've experienced are some grand plan to place me in the hands of the Institute. I wish I knew. Then at least I could say I understood something about this whole situation.

But at least I have people I can talk to. People I know who understand this sort of thing. People like you, Jon. I hope you know that I appreciate that. Even if you don't know what this is, I know I can tell you about it, and even if it gets filed away in some dark corner of this place...well, at least it's not just in my head any more.

Thanks, for that. ( _ pause _ )

I think I'm done now.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

SOREN

_ (deep sigh, wince.) _ Ow.

ARCHIVIST

Are you alright?

SOREN

Yeah. Just...just my throat. I guess I talked a lot? I didn't ...even realize I had that much to say.

ARCHIVIST

A lot of those who come in to read statements feel that way. It's not uncommon.

SOREN

Glad to hear that, I guess.

ARCHIVIST

Do....do you want a lozenge? I think I may have one, somewhere. Or a cup of tea? For your throat.

SOREN

Um...I wouldn't mind it, I think. Yeah. I think...maybe....  _ (Trails off.) _

Um. Are you free? After this?

ARCHIVIST

_ (Pause) _ I...don't think I have any other statements I planned to review today. Why do you ask?

SOREN

I thought, maybe, the tea thing. I mean, do you...want to go get a cup of tea with me? ( _ Pause _ ) N- no pressure, of course, if you don't want to. I just thought since the statement took a lot out of me, it might've taken a lot out of you, a-and you suggested the tea, so-

ARCHIVIST

Oh. ( _ pause _ ) Oh, um, yes. Sure. Tea.

SOREN

I mean, only if it's not a problem and you're not busy. I, um. Know a place nearby with nice teas. A cafe. I- I was planning to probably go there anyway, so if you don't want to go, I'll just go myself and bring something back, or maybe not bring something back, and just go home- 

ARCHIVIST

No, it's....it's not a problem. I'll...get my coat?

SOREN

Oh. Okay. Um, I think mine's in the closet over by the door, still. I'll just grab that on the way.  _ (Rustling, as if getting up from the seat. _ ) Um. Jon?

ARCHIVIST

( _ from further away) _ Yes?

SOREN

D--did you turn the tape recorder off already? Or has it been…

ARCHIVIST

Oh.  _ (Footsteps are heard, walking from further away to near microphone)  _ Er, I'll just go ahead and - ( _ Clicking of tape recorder as it turns off.) _

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes:  
1 Attush: Attush fabrics are made from fiber which is obtained from the endodermis of trees such as Elm. Those attush fabrics made from Staff-tree fiber or nettles are called "retarpe," which means white things, because the color of the fabric is white. The Sakhalin Ainu are noted for wearing these clothes. While the Ainu wore bark clothes appliqued or embroidered as formal clothes, they wore such clothes without patterns as everyday ones. (http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/study/eng07.html)  
2Hanten (袢纏; also半纏,半天, or袢天), a short winter coat, is an item of traditional Japanese clothing. The coat started to be worn, especially by the common people, in the 18th century during the Edo period. The shape of the hanten bears a resemblance to the haori and is worn by both men and women. (Wikipedia)
> 
> All of these items are directly taken from events in my life, with only small bits of exaggeration. Yes, I have had all of those dreams. Yes I have done work with Ainu communities in Japan. Basically all of the facts here are based on real life events.  



End file.
